gripmarketing

You are having your soft GO now. You should have your hard GO the first week of Jan. You've got to move quickly, because if you dilly-dally in building your customer base, your overhead will devour you. Do not wait.

January is a good month to get great results. Follow it with more advertising in Feb. Remember it's all about providing an irresistible offer.

alohatanning

gary,
My customer base now is 120 people in 8 days. I wanted to do the GO in February though. Around here people seem to be vacationing January. Not a good idea? In your experience how many clients should I have by now, or by the end of my first month? I have nothing to base numbers on. Also, how far should should I expect to draw people from. I thought it was 3 miles but I am doing more like 5-7 miles. I also have a tanning salon about 6 miles away in a different town that is "spying" on me. She is talking bad about me to her customers and employees. One of her employees left and wanted to work here becasue she is a lunatic. I have cusotmerscoming in now saying she is down right rude. How should I handle that?

ALOHATANCA

How should you handle it ????? Enjoy it !!!! Tell them you are sorry for their bad experience & welcome to Aloha Tan!!!!!!!!!! All this is normal,.

MJ

Quote:One of her employees left and wanted to work here becasue she is a lunatic. I have cusotmerscoming in now saying she is down right rude. How should I handle that?


Personally I have never had a good experience with hiring someone that has ever worked at another tanning salon. I like to train the girls to do things my way. All I ever heard were excuses from them of why they did not do things correctly. or made mistakes was .."oh I am sorry, we use to it this way"

Since you are new I would be particularly careful about hiring staff of your local competitor. JMHO Above is not the worse case scenerio. It could be other motives.


I would steer clear doing this until you have agood footing and have enough experience in the process of hiring an firing process. And can gage a potential new employees intentions from experience and confidence.

Everything you do right now is on a learning curve. I would hate for you get burned by a competitor that feels threaten by the new guy in town. It has been known to happen. Now there is nothing you can do if they do not tell you they used to work in a salon.

But you can determine that during training be sure to ask if they have ever worked in a tanning salon on teh employment application.

They may be spys but they are not usually that smart. Look for warning signs while training employees. And if they all of a sudden remember they used to work in a salon along time ago...fire them.

Business is not always pretty and I have had competitors go as far as send a mole to break my beds, send her staff down to see if they can work for me. From removing my signs and advertisements in other local businesses, have ALL thier friends and family call and complain about flyers from my salon distributed in their neighborhoods. (of which only resulted in me sweeping their neighborhood and plaza twice that month. )

This is not a game..they are not playing. You have to be careful.. Good Luck.



_________________
Jane... You Ignorant Sl*t!!!

[ This Message was edited by: MJ on 2004-12-12 13:38 ][ This Message was edited by: MJ on 2004-12-12 13:40 ]